Atlanta (CNN) - The code-red siren blaring in Israel on Tuesday hit close to home for Rabbi Adam Starr.

His wife and daughter were visiting the Jewish state Tuesday, where Israelis have been darting for cover from daily Hamas rocket fire.

Starr breathed easy after he got off the phone with his wife.

"She's in Jerusalem," said Starr, leader of the Young Israel of Toco Hills synagogue in Atlanta. "She called me to tell me she is OK."

But he and others in his congregation and across the country remain anxious over the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

"We all have many friends and family in Israel," Starr said, referring to his congregants. "We're seeing on Facebook and Twitter our good friends and what they are going through, the complexities in trying to explain this to their young children."

Starr's angst underscores the close bonds between the American Jewish community and Israel, a relationship that predates the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

The bonds are underscored by their size. The world's largest Jewish community is in Israel at nearly 6 million people, according to estimates. The U.S. Jewish community is the second most populous at an estimated 5 million plus.

After Israel kicked off its offensive last week to stop Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli communities, Starr and others in the U.S. Jewish community sent an SOS across the United States: Help Israelis. Send donations. Demonstrate for the Jewish state. Let our brothers and sisters in Israel know they're not alone.

Jewish groups staged rallies in cities across the United States, including Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. More than $5 million in pledges to help the battered southern Israel communities has poured in, according to the Jewish Federations of North America. Jewish leaders have traveled to Israel to show their support, it said.

After four years of continued hostility, Ceren said, there is more of a clear-eyed view of the perceived motives of Hamas, regarded by the United States and Israel as a terrorist group that is backed by Iran.

The 2008-09 operation failed to loosen Hamas' hold on power in Gaza. The militant rocket attacks from the territory ramped up year by year.

Hamas remained staunchly anti-Israel, and Israel's economic blockade to choke off the delivery of weapons from abroad has generated grass-roots support for the militant group.

"Now that naïveté has become impossible to justify," Ceren said. "The claim that Hamas can be peeled away from Iran doesn't pass the laugh test."

Israel has massed troops at the Gaza border and has threatened a ground offensive. Even though American Jews widely support Israel's right to defend itself from rocket fire coming from Gaza, there is disagreement about the best way to do that. Prior to the recently announced cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, there was much hand-wringing over the wisdom of Israeli ground troops re-entering Gaza.

Some hope a ground war will be avoided, but it's a hard call.

"It seems to be a no-win situation," said Max Rosenthal, active in the small Jewish community of Huntsville, Alabama.

Israel can't live with thousands of rockets coming in every single day, he said. And it faces the challenge of trying to thwart Hamas without killing "huge amounts of people."

"If we go in with a truce, it'll be OK for a few months, then they'll start over again, they'll get more rockets in."

But Rosenthal and other U.S. Jews stress that the destruction of Israel is Hamas' avowed goal. And the future he sees is one of constant conflict.

"There's a feeling this is not going to end well, one way or the other," he said.

"My own feeling is a feeling of despair. I don't see any way of resolving it other than going in and wiping out Gaza and that is certainly not what anyone wants to do."

The executive director of J Street, a Washington-based advocacy group which bills itself as "the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans," questions whether further military action by Israel "would end the rockets and make Israel more secure" after Cast Lead.

"Today, rockets are more numerous and powerful. Israel is more isolated in its region and more ostracized around the world," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street executive director.

"Only a political resolution to the century-old conflict with the Palestinians resulting in two states living side by side can end the conflict. Without that, in a few short years, we'll be right back here again: anger deeper, rockets more powerful, and political forces yet more extreme."

There's no question that Israel has a right to defend itself, just like any other sovereign nation, said Lindy Miller Crane, a member of Atlanta's Jewish community.

"If rockets were fired to the United States from Cuba, I would hope that the U.S. would react," she said.

Yet, like many Jews who consider themselves politically liberal, she is "ambivalent and conflicted" about how to achieve peace.

If and when a cease-fire comes together, she's worried about the follow-through.

She said that's because it seems as though no progress has been made to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue since the 2008 Israeli military operation in Gaza.

It's like the movie "Groundhog Day," Crane said.

She believes that if Israel can start addressing issues of racism and inequality, this will help the Jewish state initiate a strategy that will bring permanent peace with Palestinians.

"It's something that's going to have to happen," said Crane. "When I think about the future of Israel - peace with the Palestinians is one aspect of that."

Israel has negotiated with the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which runs the government in the West Bank. A main stumbling block to an Israeli-Palestinian peace has been the existence and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

There is vehement disagreement among U.S. Jews about Fatah and its motivations.

Fatah casts itself as distinct from Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel (Fatah does not). But they aren't much different, according to Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of pro-Israel group StandWithUs.

Just read and listen to Fatah's anti-Israel rhetoric, educational system, and media, she said.

They "don't acknowledge there's an Israel next door," she said.

Israel "can get tough on Hamas" and weaken it politically by working with the Palestinian Authority - which is dominated by Hamas' rival, Fatah - toward creating an Israel and Palestinian state, wrote Peter Beinart for the Daily Beast.

"The problem is that in order to make Hamas suffer for opposing the two-state solution, Israel's government would have to truly embrace that solution," he wrote.

But he didn't hold out any hope that Israel would do that.

"Taking a hard line against Hamas requires taking a hard line against the settlements - and at the end of the day, this Israeli government is soft on them both," he wrote.

Near the war but far from the political ferment, Jodi Mansbach, an Atlanta urban planner, sat in a Tel Aviv cafe this week.

Her 16-year-old son is spending a semester at an Israeli high school, and she was visiting him for the Thanksgiving holiday.

After the conflict started, her son had to be transferred from his school in Be'er Sheva, in the southern Israel danger zone, to Tel Aviv - a relatively safer location, despite a bus bomb and air raid sirens.

Mansbach admires the cool way her son's teachers and counselors and Israelis in general cope with fear. They know how to handle life amid air raid sirens, shelters and rocket fire.

"It's so much more scary on the news," she said.

She also draws inspiration from people of other nations, tourists and business people from places like Sweden and Germany, who share her hotel in Tel Aviv.

"The American Jewish community should take a cue from the rest of the world. They are here," she said, referring to Jewish and non-Jewish visitors.

"They are not letting the conflict get in the way. To me, that's incredibly inspiring."

The Balfour Declaration (dated 2 November 1917) was a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

So then, "International" finaglers, those who did write in jewish manueverings to steal Arab Lands by hook-N-crook doctrines and give such lands all for the jewish land theives wrought on by 2nd generation jewish banker the rothchild syndicate? Go figure!

November 21, 2012 at 7:33 pm |

Hugh

Not sure what White Power site you leeched this garbage from but Israel is a fact and you and your izlamanazi buddies will continue to well deserved lead through the back of your cranium, or in your case, brain stem...

A scattering smatterings of variegated opulence-ended minds are systolically deemed feeble-minded 'religiosofic' hoistings unendingly careening upon many culpable minds in these trying days' Age. Leave therefore your harshest social wantings and onwardly unprovable devotional yearnings behind and never take wind of one's earnest psychic longings for the weightiness of one's theatrical longings will smite even the most goodly intentioned influential beings. Carry away nothing and leave, ever to make headway to the places inside one's psychic-being and do not keep ajar your heart's door for many will want to enter in and should not. Your loving of this Life is but for the world to have needs of and you should not heed the rumors from others as to just what is truly righteous. It is therefore best for mankind to simmer in their yet unfinished juvenile pottages never rationalizingly 'assaying' one's diffuse detriments, the very smallest of life's grains. As smitten breeds, our cynical splendors reveal one's characters to be traitorous to one's self and others analogous foldedness. Where then does true life really end and real living truly begin?

For this world knows not the time nor the place for the 'sons of man' and their coming upon this world to make judgement upon the world's governance. Behold you now for the time is now upon mankind for these 'sons of man' are now placed in and upon mankind's midsts. They do see much societal and governing goodness upon many lands and the one son does also see much bitterness as well. These sons of but a simple minded fatherly man knows well the bitterness of social torments and much of the worldly social egress.

The tears that flow from this man's sons are bitter and with much consolations gathering in their togetherness as wasted nuptials being leveraged upon by time's undoing stature. The angst of one man's sired sons is but now the two-folded spark of leavened thanksgiving and no more trickeries to be unfolded upon mankind! No more is unsoundness being one sons' beatifications while the otherly son does wastefully partake of brewed measures. As sons of loving parents, do we live on and towards finality's ends.

Though my sights are now set, my heart maintains a pleasingly maleable notion of motion. I do so love my brother and other humane fledglings beyond the bounds of the wateriness-afforded baptismal complacencies. My brother and I are one blood and nothing dare comes between us lest they be but friendly natured. God as my soul's judge and Christ Jesus is my publicity's defender regarding my ongoing maleable heart! I am hell-bent to be my brother's keeper foresaking the watery conditionings of religious persuasion.

May no man nor any women scorn my lot in this Life's consortium of brotherly assets. God forbade me in my time's past and did allow me the freedoms to be hung with! May the son and brother, being born of one common-placed man named Joseph and motherly named Mary, be never-no-more to be found unwilling to set things right no matter what was so done in time's long ago passing momentums!

hamas and the "palestinians" have no claim to the land. They were va .grants, liars and thieves run out of their homelands and driven as far west as the other Arabs could push them. Too bad they were stopped by the sea.

Notwithstanding Israel-Firsters’ best efforts (which are pretty pathetic), fellow readers, please feel free to use any of the bullets below whenever Israel-Firsters complain that the Palestinians are making use of civilians as human shields. These bullets should be used one at a time and can be modified as needed so that the Israel-Firsters no longer have a monopoly on the subject of “human shields”, which they use to justify attacking Palestinian civilian infrastructure like apartments, buses, ambulances, press headquarters, factories, houses, apartment blocks et al each and every time!

My only advice is for different people to take the bullets required and use them individually one at a time as required multiple times on as many web forums as is feasible. Saturate the use of this information to the point that it is widespread with both the media and other readers so that Israel-Firsters become laughing stocks whenever they complain of Palestinians using civilians as human shields when it is obvious that Israel has turned its entire population into human shields that the Israeli military cowardly hides behind!

• Why does Israel endanger its citizens and use them as human shields by demanding that its soldiers use public transportation including buses to go to and fro to military bases? That is wrong, and Israel must stop endangering its citizens by hiding its military, their bases, and its soldiers among the civilians.

• Israel keeps complaining that Hamas hides among civilians but why does Israel endanger its own citizens by telling its soldiers to use public transportation to go back and forth from military bases? Israel stop using your citizens as human shields.

• Why has Israel embedded the Israeli Defence Headquarters deep in the heart of Tel Aviv and demand that soldiers use public transportation to go back and forth there given that Israel is knowingly making its own citizens into human shields?

• It is ironic that Israel is knowingly making its own citizens human shields by demanding that Israeli soldiers take public buses back and forth into and out of military bases, and then locates these bases including the Israeli Defence Ministry deep inside major population centres like Tel Aviv).

• Sad that Israel is using its citizens as human shields when it demands that its soldiers take public buses in and out of military bases that are embedded deep in the centres of Israeli cities like the Israel Defence Ministry located in the heart of Tel Aviv and where a bus was attacked that carried soldiers.

• Horrible to see how Israeli soldiers use Israeli civilians as human shields by demanding use of public buses and taxis in and out of military bases embedded deep inside of Israel’s major cities or even when they are outside. Why is endangering its own citizens by making them into human shields?

• Enough is enough….Israel always claims that Hamas is using civilians as human shields but why are Israeli soldiers wilfully using public transportation to get in and out of their military bases including public buses and taxis. Further, why are Israeli military bases and centres embedded deep inside of Israeli cities like Israeli Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv (where a bus was attacked that also carried soldiers)? Also, why are Israel’s munitions factories and armament production facilities located inside of these cities. Sad that Israel is using its own citizens as human shields!!!

• I find it disgusting that Israel uses its own citizens as human shields by telling its soldiers to take public transportation including buses and taxis in and out of military bases that are embedded deep inside of major population centres. It is equally disgusting that Israel has located its major munitions and armaments factories inside these civilian areas thereby making its own Israeli citizens human shields.

• How ironic that Israel complains about the Palestinians using civilians as human shields as Israel wilfully endangers its own citizens by demanding that its soldiers take public transportation including buses and taxis into and out military centres such as the Israeli Defence Headquarters in Tel Aviv (where a bus was recently attacked)….crocodile tears by Israel ain’t gonna cut it no more. Israel stop using your own citizens as human shields!!!

• Too bad that Israel uses its own citizens as human shields by locating its military centres such as the Israeli Defence Ministry and military bases deep inside Israel’s major population centres such as Tel Aviv and doubles up the use of Israeli citizens as human shields by requiring that Israeli soldiers use public transportation including civilian buses to get in and out of these areas. Talk about using civilians as human shields, Israel is the best at this and then shedding crocodile tears to try to get sympathy.

• Hey, why is Israel embedding its major armaments and munitions factories deep inside its major population centres like Tel Aviv? Why is the Israeli Ministry of Defence located deep inside the heart of Tel; Aviv and why does Israel demand that its soldiers use public transportation including public buses and taxis to get in and out of its military centres? Sheesh but talk about Israel endangering its own citizens by using them as human shields.

• Israel must stop building munitions and armament factories deep inside of its major population centres as it is making its own citizens human shields. Moreover, Israel must stop building military bases and headquarters like Israel’s Defence Ministry in the centre of major cities like it has done in that case as again that makes its own citizens human shields. Worst of all, Israel demands that its soldiers use public transportation including buses and taxis to go to and fro from these military bases which is wilfully endangering civilians and making use of them as human shields.

• Ironic that Israel keeps complaining about Arabs using civilians as human shields when it has done exactly that by embedding the Israeli Defence Ministry and many military bases deep inside major population centres such as Tel Aviv and then requires its soldiers to use public transportation including buses and taxis to go in and out of there. Then it also locates its major munitions and armaments factories inside these major population centres and cries wolf when those locations are targeted. Israel stop using your people as human shields.

• The days when people are ignorant of how Israel uses its citizens as human shields is now gone. Israel, how dare you endanger your citizens and use them as human shields by demanding that your soldiers use public transportation including buses and taxis to get to and fro from major military centres such as Israeli Defence Ministry (located deep in the heart of Tel Aviv and where a bus was recently attacked), and military bases inside of major population centres. Israel must stop using its own citizens as human shields as that is disgusting!

• Why are Israeli soldiers making use of other Israelis as human shields by demanding to take public transportation in and out of major military centres such the Israeli Defence Ministry (which is located deep inside of Tel Aviv)? Additionally, why has Israel situated its major armaments and munitions factories deep inside its major population centres. It is disgusting that Israel is making its own citizens into human shields.

• Too bad for Israel that Americans are now on to the fact that it uses its own citizens as human shields when Israel demands that its soldiers use public transportation to go to and fro from major military centres such as the Israeli Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv (where a bus was recently attacked that had soldiers on it also). Equally bad, Israel has located major munitions and armaments factories deep inside these major population centres thereby wilfully using its own citizens as human shields. Hey, why has Israel located major military centres deep inside of major population centres anyway except to complain about civilian deaths when these centres are attacked. Sheesh, talk about cynically using your own citizens as human shields! Israel should be ashamed.

• Enough of crocodile tears by Israel that Palestinians are using civilians as human shields. Reality check: Israel demands that its soldiers use public transportation including buses and taxis to go to and fro from major military bases making civilians hostage to being attacked and thereby being able to whine how victimized the poor Israeli civilians are when they being victimized, in fact, by Israel’s own military and its political and military leaders! Reality check: Israel has located major military centres such as the Israeli Ministry of Defence deep inside the heart of Tel Aviv knowingly turning its own citizens into human shields! Reality check: Israel has knowingly located its armaments and munitions production centres deep inside major population centres again making Israeli civilians into human shields and collateral military targets. Israel should be ashamed of turning all of its civilians into human shields and shedding crocodile tears when they are victimized!

Israel's soldiers just level apartment buildings with one ton bombs killing Palestinian children that they pretend they don't are there! Sheesh but Israe Firsters are easy to expose!

• "Israeli PR methods:
1. We haven't heard reports of deaths, will check into it
2. The people were killed, but by a faulty Palestinian rocket/bomb
3. Ok we killed them, but they were terrorists
4. Ok they were civilians, but they were being used as human shields
5. Ok there were no fighters in the area, so it was our mistake. But we kill civilians by accident, they do it on purpose
6. Ok we kill far more civilians than they do, but look at how terrible other countries are!
7. Why are you still talking about Israel? Are you some kind of anti-semite?
8. Repeat from step 1 (Test this against the next interview you hear or watch.)"

November 21, 2012 at 6:14 pm |

RonFromNM

The real question is how come you pull nonsense out of your ass and expect people to take it seriously. Anti-semitic bigot.

November 21, 2012 at 9:18 pm |

Lance

• Hey, why is Israel embedding its major armaments and munitions factories deep inside its major population centres like Tel Aviv? Why is the Israeli Ministry of Defence located deep inside the heart of Tel; Aviv and why does Israel demand that its soldiers use public transportation including public buses and taxis to get in and out of its military centres? Sheesh but talk about Israel endangering its own citizens by using them as human shields

November 21, 2012 at 6:14 pm |

Remo

Go back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917. England was the original problem in Palestine...

The Balfour Declaration (dated 2 November 1917) was a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

November 21, 2012 at 6:17 pm |

Ting

The Brits entered the territory in 1917 and the handed it over to the Israelis in 1948. This land has changed hands many times and it's occupation will always be disputed.

So then, "International" finaglers, those who did write in jewish manueverings to steal Arab Lands by hook-N-crook doctrines and give such lands all for the jewish theives wrought on by 2nd generation jewish banker the rothchild syndicates?

November 21, 2012 at 6:47 pm |

Russ

wow, God's Oldest Dreamer who preaches on and on at quite some length about love, is really just a Nazi? Gotta love religion!

Not so fast, CNN. Israel's government openly supported Romney and constantly criticized Obama, interfering with our election. 70% of American Jews, knowing this, voted for Obama. American Jews are by no means a bloc when it comes to Israeli's trouble making Prime Minister or discriminatory government policies.

November 21, 2012 at 4:38 pm |

max

What a load of crap. You might as well say that Hulk Hogan and Hollywood Hogan are completely different. In America we have 40 choices of cereal in the food store and 2 choices for president. Both Obama and Romney suck Israeli balls...the only difference and the only reason Israel supported Romney more is because if Obama won, which he did he cannot be re-elected which is a small problem for organizations such as AIPAC and ADL who do their best to coerce US politicians. Now that Obama cannot be re-elected AIPAC's power to bend him over is slightly diminished but don't worry, congress is still spread eagle. The Zionists are not voting for the US they are voting for Israel, they would fight for Israel if there was ever a war between the US and Israel and the don't give a crap about US taxpayers...they just want your money.

November 21, 2012 at 5:01 pm |

max

Here's some real news...strait from the ADL lips. Who cares what the American Jews think, they make up less than 5% of the nation and yet they have, according to Forbes Mag. the 2nd most powerful lobby behind the AARP. They get all the UN Veto's they desire and they get tons of US tax dollars...they are also the only country in the world that is allowed access to US top of the line military weapons, etc. etc. Israel is a pain the neck for the average American and all of the Zionists are are here, like the communists for one reason....to take from you and give their own. They don't give two Shi#'s about you because you don't believe in Judaism. All they want is your money. Wake up USA before these people and your sell out politicians, 99% of whom suck Israeli balls permanently destroy your economy.

November 21, 2012 at 4:38 pm |

Hanno Phoenicia

No, Moron boy. 70% of American Jews voted for the candidate Israel hated.

November 21, 2012 at 4:39 pm |

Honey Badger Dont Care

Not to mention that the $3 billion given to Israel yearly is not given in quarterly stipends like the US give to other countries, it is a lump sum.

And the aid given to Israel is not a loan like the others, it is considered a grant. As in not to be paid back.

November 21, 2012 at 6:34 pm |

Honey Badger Dont Care

137 Palestinians killed, including children, and 1100 injured. And how many in Israel? 4 dead?

November 21, 2012 at 4:32 pm |

max

Israel has all the weapons...for defense only of course. Like the Stealth fighter, which does not have a defensive weapons system on it...it is completely, 100% an offensive weapon.

November 21, 2012 at 4:40 pm |

gmmo1971

Read about the Israel Lobby and you will know why this will only get worse unless we (US) stop sending money to israel

November 21, 2012 at 4:24 pm |

Honey Badger Dont Care

The US should be condemning both sides of this. We shouldn't be backing anyone over there.

November 21, 2012 at 4:33 pm |

Mirem

Bingo!

November 21, 2012 at 7:03 pm |

Mirem

Bingo! The US Government should not be hostage to the Israeli Lobby and should not be condoning this genocidal apartheid!

It is because we are unable to have an acurate perception of our future and that we are unable to understand what has been told to us of the future that allows us to continue with this delusional distructive deceptive spiral.

November 21, 2012 at 4:17 pm |

Mirem

And because you have not learned from history... You are right Paul, Israel is heading for self destruction and they are the only ones to blame.

The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.